Facebook quietly launches Lasso, a TikTok-clone app to win teens over

Facebook launches Lasso, a short video app like competitor TikTok

Facebook on Friday quietly launched its stand-alone music app to rival popular short-video social network, TikTok, without any official announcement on its website, reports The Verge.

Called “Lasso”, the music app is directed at teens which allows users to create short music videos similar to TikTok, the short 15-second video app that had recently merged with Musical.ly. Lasso is available on both, iOS and Android. Currently, the app is available only for users in the U.S.

Apparently, almost half of teenagers in the U.S. say they use Facebook, which is a decrease of 20 percent from 2015, according to Pew. In comparison, nearly 69 percent of US teenagers use Snapchat, 72 percent say they use Instagram and 85 percent say they use YouTube. Hence, it is believed that Facebook has introduced Lasso app to lure the teenagers and gain its lost hold.

“Lasso is a new standalone app for short-form, entertaining videos — from comedy to beauty to fitness and more. We’re excited about the potential here, and we’ll be gathering feedback from people and creators,” Facebook told The Verge.

With Lasso, users can record themselves dancing and lip-syncing to music and also record short clips. It allows users to add music and text to their videos, add cool effects, etc. Users can also find popular hashtags, follow creators, and browse videos.

Users can sign in to Lasso through Instagram or create an account using Facebook. They can share their videos directly from the app to their Facebook Stories, with the feature to share them as Instagram Stories coming soon. All profiles and videos on Lasso would be public, which means you cannot keep anything private.

Currently, it is unclear when Facebook would be releasing the app globally.